Drones save a lot money, time, and American lives, and the unfortunate fact that they're responsible for minor collateral damage and a few civilian casualties isn't enough to completely warrant that they be phased out of combat

Imagine if at any given time, without warning, a missile could come out of the sky and kill you or the people around you. And then sometimes the drone comes back and hits again when the first responders show up to help survivors. Any adult male in the area around a strike is considered an "enemy combatant" without even knowing who they are. Sometimes they just see somebody while flying and kill them, like a few months ago farmer that was farming at night, a custom in the area. How would you feel if you and your were subjected to instantaneous death from above that could come at any time and you can't do anything about?

They save money? Sure. Time? Hey, by that logic why send in SEALs to the Bin Laden compound when we could just nuke the city? American lives? Well, if we reign terror on all the innocent people in one region of the world, traumatizing and completely pissing off everybody in the world for years on end it must be okay because we can protect a few American soldiers by stopping them from doing what they ******* SIGNED UP TO DO!

I think that was the same mentality we had when we were sending Japanese-Americans to internment camps after Pearl Harbor. Y'know that "better safe than sorry" attitude that we use now to justify the slaughtering of innocent civilians.

And, btw, all military technology is going to cost more money which is what makes defense spending such a great thing to cut to help get the economy back on track. The day any elected official suggests it, however, is the day that they're never heard from again!

It's not "what" the government is using, it's "how" and "when" they are using it.

Drones as a technology are ******* awesome. But the government is using them to kill people without due process and without a declaration of war. Also, the government is not explicitly prohibited from targeting civilians on US soil (they said that they "would not" do such a thing--and such a scenario would be extremely unlikely--but "would not" is nowhere near as definitive as "can not".)

That's the crux of the debate. It would be the same if the government was using regular manned aircraft.

That's not what the debate is about. It's about the ability of the government to target unarmed non-combatants--even civilians--without due process, in a country where they have not declared war, even on US soil.

They're killing people in Pakistan without due process because it really is illegal isn't it? The problem is the US is left with little choice when it comes to violating Pakistan's sovereign territory. Pakistan gets billions of dollars to spend hunting terrorists, but they do a lousy job to keep getting money from the US. Pakistan doesn't capture or kill enough terrorists so drones get sent in. America should really focus on building better governments in the Middle East if they want to continue hunting terrorists, and to stop giving people reasons to become terrorists